A Proximity Analysis of Vocally Expressed Emotion

Abstract

Actors read several emotional passages expressing either love, grief, indifference, contempt, or hate. The same two sentences appeared somewhere in each passage. The actors' readings of these two sentences were taped, and they were then played to Ss who were asked to identify the emotion expressed by each. Ss' errors were subjected to a proximity analysis; a single dimension was obtained. In addition, Ss attempted to identify the emotions after the tapes of the sentences had been copied through a low-pass filter. Results were similar.